Brian’s discontent and desire to leave the United States

Brian Redfield’s discontent with his medical profession and his life in the United States is a persistent, unresolved strain in his marriage to Irene Redfield. His wish to leave for South America, particularly Brazil, has been checked by Irene’s opposition, but it has not disappeared: beneath the household routine she has worked to preserve, his dissatisfaction continues to surface.

Identity and Working Life

Brian is a physician, and his work is presented not as a source of fulfillment but as a source of fatigue and aversion. In conversation, he describes the profession as hard, monotonous, and nerve-racking. The burdens he singles out are concrete: sick patients, families he considers meddlesome, unpleasant rooms, and the work of climbing dark hallways. His complaint makes clear that his discontent is not only an abstract wish to travel; it is attached to the daily conditions of his occupation.

His success in the profession does not settle the disagreement between him and Irene. She regards his professional standing as evidence that she was right to insist that he remain in New York City, and believes staying benefited him as well as the family. Yet her confidence in that interpretation stands beside his continuing dislike of his work and country. The contrast leaves success unable to serve as proof that he is content.

The Wish to Leave

Brian’s attraction to South America is stated plainly during a conversation about his work. Irene explains that he is drawn there, and John Bellew’s racist comment about the region immediately follows. The juxtaposition places Brian’s wish within a social world marked by racial hostility, but the evidence does not establish Bellew’s remark as the cause of Brian’s desire to go. Brian’s own stated reasons elsewhere are his dissatisfaction with his profession and his country; the connection between those complaints and his proposed destination remains suggestive rather than fully explained.

Irene remembers that, early in their marriage, she made strenuous efforts to repress Brian’s longing for a strange and different place. His plan to go to Brazil became the subject of a serious quarrel. She opposed it, argued that it was impracticable and would have consequences for her and their sons, and even raised the possibility that their marriage might end if he persisted. He did not leave, and the couple did not return to open quarrelling or threats over the plan. That outward quiet, however, did not mean the underlying difference had been resolved.

Marriage and Containment

The desire reappears in Irene’s thoughts when she returns to her family. She hopes Brian has not been lonely in her absence and worries that loneliness might revive the restless craving for somewhere unfamiliar. She recalls that this restlessness has returned at gradually longer intervals, a pattern that gives her some reassurance without convincing her it is over. The wish is intermittent, but its recurrence keeps it present in the marriage.

When Brian’s expression of discontent again alarms her, Irene interprets the conflict through her commitment to domestic permanence. She thinks of the life she has arranged for the family and fears that his wish to go to Brazil could undo its stability. She insists to herself that she understands him, that her guidance has helped make a marriage once threatened with failure succeed, and that his dissatisfaction will eventually die away. Yet she also remembers having believed before that it had vanished, only to sense that she had been mistaken. Her certainty is therefore less a report of resolution than an effort to contain a possibility she does not want to face.

At one point, Brian asks not to continue discussing the matter, and the conversation turns back to immediate plans. Irene does not answer his dissatisfaction directly. Instead, she decides that she must make some plan and offer something in its place, so that the unsettled desire can be banked down. Her response shows how the couple’s conflict is managed: the wish to leave remains his, while she assumes responsibility for directing him back toward the life they already have.

Persistence and Narrative Significance

The narrative presents Brian’s desire chiefly through Irene’s recollections, observations, and interpretations. His internal motives are not fully disclosed. Irene believes she knows him exceptionally well, yet his continuing dislike of his profession and country makes her wonder whether she has misjudged him. She quickly resists that possibility and returns to the conviction that she has understood him correctly. The tension between what she thinks she knows and what his recurring discontent suggests keeps the state unresolved.

Brian’s wish also exposes a difference in what the marriage is meant to preserve. For Irene, the established household offers security and continuity; for Brian, remaining in the same profession and country is bound up with an enduring dissatisfaction. Her concern extends to their sons and the consequences of departure, while the evidence gives no comparable account of Brian’s view of those consequences. The imbalance matters: the plan is remembered as a marital crisis largely through the perspective of the person who prevented it.

The available narrative does not show Brian carrying out his plan to leave. It shows neither a final abandonment of the idea nor a settled reconciliation between his discontent and Irene’s preferred domestic order. Instead, the desire recedes, returns, and is managed again. That recurrence makes it a continuing pressure on the marriage rather than a completed episode, and leaves the family’s apparent stability shadowed by a future Irene cannot securely control.